It is not just the reality that we will one day die that should inform our pastoral presence, but also the fact that even now we live only by the grace of God. The grace of God in Christ is not only true, but it turns out that it is all that we have.
In this space between Christmastide and the Baptism of our Lord, it is good to recall that God became man, and not for a moment, playing with human likeness and then giving it up for better things. This is a God who goes to the place of wielded swords and worse. And the child hums in the stable, "become like me."
Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, St. Paul, and the Transfiguration of Mortality
Adapted from a presentation given March 6 at St. John the Divine Episcopal Church, Houston.
I...
By James Richardson
Ash Wednesday 2018 dawned like no other in my lifetime.
A few short months earlier, fires had raged through Sonoma, Napa, and Lake...